Year: 2025

Background

JetBlue added Japan Airlines (JAL) as a mileage partner last week. Over the weekend there was award space using JetBlue miles for booking at least two seats in JAL First Class between the US and Japan for most of the schedule. That sort of availability for booking JAL First is unprecedented; it’s a lot like if you drove to every Walmart in the United States and didn’t find a single person in line at a money center. While technically it’s possible to happen, if it did you’d probably wonder if you were in some sort of bizarro churning novel and whether you ought to visit every roulette table in Vegas and bet on black.

The wide-open JAL First availability was only found on JetBlue though. Other partners that can book JAL First awards like AA, Alaska, and JAL itself had almost no availability for even one seat, let alone two. So, how come JetBlue had so much availability? The dump in inventory could reasonably explained by one of two things:

  • Launch celebration: JAL gave JetBlue plenty of inventory not available to others during initial launch to celebrate the new partnership
  • Bug: A technical error between JAL and JetBlue showed space that shouldn’t have been bookable

It’s too soon to know which of the above possibilities it was, but for the sake of everyone who transferred a bunch of miles into JetBlue’s program and booked awards, let’s hope it was the former.

The Wisdom

This is a wisdom post (without an alliteration, sorry Jen), so what can we learn from all this?

  • When space is only available via a single partner, there’s a chance it’s not real and will either be non-bookable or will get cancelled before you can fly
  • When you’re going to transfer a flexible, valuable currency like Ultimate Rewards into a less valuable program like JetBlue TrueBlue, make sure you’re comfortable with stranded miles in case the booking doesn’t work; do a risk asssessment
  • Don’t forget that many airlines let you hold awards over the phone, so you can test award bookability without transferring miles in and potentially leaving them stranded (but JetBlue doesn’t offer holds, so didn’t matter in this case)
  • New partnerships occasionally open short windows of opportunity

Good luck to those who booked!

Future churning novel brings even more JetBlue-esque craziness.

  1. Meijer stores have a digital coupon for $10 off of $150+ Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. This is probably the type of coupon that can be reclipped after each use, but multiple MPerks accounts are an alternate way out.

    These are Pathward or Sunrise gift cards, and if you have a good liquidation channel this is the kind of deal that can make sense to travel from out of state too. (Thanks to Jonathan)
  2. Meijer stores have $50,000 points with a $500 third party gift card purchase through May 10 (excluding Amazon and phone cards), limit one per MPerks account.

    BestBuy, Home Depot, and Lululemon are great candidates for scaling this one as the market recovers from being high in a Pepper induced coma. This deal can also make sense for out of state travel, but Pepper makes it slightly less so than typical.
  3. Bilt has a tiered transfer bonus of 25%-100% to Southwest Rapid Rewards on Thursday. I can’t find any limit, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t one and it’ll probably be 100,000 points or less.

    Apropos of, let’s say, nothing: What’s better than one mediocre company? Two mediocre companies working together!
  4. Brian M notes that Southwest has new targeted promotions for bonus mileage earned on paid tickets. Brian’s example bonus was +60% earning for A-List members (that’s +35% over normal).

    You can check your promotions at this link.
  5. Speaking of Pepper, I’m still waiting for things to stabilize for at least a couple of days before the next full update. There’s enough for another short-form cluster hug though:

    – Coin redemptions were down for the weekend and continue to be offline, but apparently will come back (?)
    – Buying gift cards was down part of the weekend
    – Coin rebate rates on most brands have dropped to the uninteresting range
    – You can’t buy Amazon or Sams Club gift cards at all
    – Coin rebates now come in four days instead of two weeks

    So, you know; typical Pepper.

Coming out of a Pepper induced coma looks fun, right kids?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ve got two special characters in the title today, let’s see what fragile internet infrastructure chokes, you know, for science.

  1. United blocks some Star Alliance redemptions from its US members, but Roame discovered that switching your location in the web site’s header to another country, like, I dunno, Zimbabwe, opens up more award inventory.
  2. Yesterday Bilt added Southwest Rapid Rewards as a transfer partner, which can be interesting given Southwest’s double-variable award redemption pricing that occasionally pushes its value up to ~1.8 cents per point. For people that don’t think in US currencies, that’s a whole 0.8 cents more than a penny worth 1.0 cents per point.

    Side note: I’m often simultaneously both “annoyed at” and “awestruck by” Bilt. Something they’ve been really good at is staying in the news every month with Rent Day, and lately they’ve been good at staying in the news weekly or more with program changes, like JAL MileageBank leakage, adding student loan redemptions for certain loans, earning a point per dollar and paying a 3% for third party credit card rent payments. The card and its benefits are decidedly average and acceptable, so don’t let its marketing machine make you think it’s better than it is.
  3. Staples reportedly has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. Citi is devaluing transfers for the Rewards+ and Double Cash card on July 27:

    – JetBlue TrueBlue: 10:7
    – Choice Hotels: 10:14
    – Wyndham Rewards: 10:7

    Other cards are unaffected. This coincides with the Emirates Skywards devaluation of 10:8 on the same date, which unfortunately affects all cards. (EDIT: Thanks to Led for letting me know about the Double Cash too)

Have a nice weekend friends!

Bilt’s marketing versus reality, but as a chess set.

  1. Chase is sending targeted offers via email for Hyatt cardholders that awards 5,000 point bonus for setting up recurring payments with three companies for three consecutive months in gyms, internet, phone, cable, transit, and utilities by November 30. Registration isn’t required.

    I debated writing about this given the work involved, but 5,000 Hyatt points are worth $100+ so here we are.
  2. The Barclays Hawaiian Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 miles after $1,000 spend in three months, and the $99 annual fee is not waived in the first year. The primary use case for this is to transfer to Alaska miles, and I guess 2x Alaska miles at grocery isn’t the worst deal in the world.

    Yes, you can get both the Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Mastercard and the Barlcays Hawaiian Mastercard, though it may require a call to reconsideration to fix Barclays automated processing which occasionally denies one of the applications as duplicate even when they’re not the same card.
  3. Japan Airlines award flights can now be redeemed with JetBlue TrueBlue miles. The current rates from the US to Japan:

    – 39,900+ TrueBlue miles in economy
    – 64,000+ TrueBlue miles in business

    Pricing is based on regions and segments, and I expect these prices to last no more than 60 days before they’re devalued. Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou points transfer in at a 1:1 ratio, while American Express Membership Rewards transfers in at 5:4 and Capital One transfers in at 5:3.
  4. Speedway store purchases of Vanilla Visas, SecureSpend gift cards, and BetMGM cards are awarding 500 points for every $25 purchased through April 29.

    That’s 10,000 points for each $500 gift card for those that loathe to do math, or I guess even for those not that don’t loathe to do math. (Thanks to GCA)
  5. The Citi ThankYou Points program is reducing the transfer ratio to Emirates Skywards from 1:1 to 5:4 on July 27. Chase, Capital One, American Express, and Bilt will continue to transfer at a 1:1 ratio. (Thanks to CouchQB)
  6. Kroger stores have a promotion tomorrow only for 4x fuel points on third party gift cards other than Amazon and on fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards.

    Let’s go on a tangent; we’ll have more Pepper updates once things stabilize, but a few interim notes relevant to this deal:

    – Fuel points rates are through the roof due to Pepper’s prior public drunkenness
    – Pepper is sobering up with large discounts gone, bulk gift card rates are recovering
    – Amazon is effectively unavailable on Pepper, so the lack of 4x matters more now than in the past

Happy Thursday!

Pictured: Pepper sobering up in the most Pepper way possible.

  1. There have been spotty reports for a couple of weeks of increased American Express Delta offers but I could never personally verify them. That changed yesterday when I found them via this link, and was also able to find them by trying different browsers and search engines to get to an offer page. If that link doesn’t work and searches are fruitless, you can possibly find them in the Delta mobile app (More → Delta Amex Cards) or potentially at this link that’s been floating around elsewhere. The offers:

    – Personal Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Personal Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business Gold: 80,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months

    The Gold cards with their waived annual fee are the stand-out winners here.
  2. The American Express Blue Business Cash has a targeted, heightened sign-up bonus of $750 after $6,000 spend in four months, effectively matching the Blue Business Plus offer from Monday.
  3. Rakuten has a new referral bonus of $40 or 4,000 Membership Rewards for both the referrer and the referred. It’s probably not gameable, why would you say otherwise? Duh.
  4. American Express offers has an offer for $250 off of $2,500 in airfare booked directly through AmEx Travel through June 17. This is limited to USD transactions which is ever-so-slightly annoying, but there are always games to play. (UPDATE: the offer is valid “once converted to USD”, thanks to Churrently)
  5. Southwest has a fare sale for travel between May 13 and October 2, booked by tomorrow night, there are blackout dates though not as many as they usually have.

    Flights booked before May 28 still get free lost checked bags.

Southwest delivers a lost bag.

Until you’ve graduated to the point where sign-up bonuses don’t really move the needle, one of your primary churning goals ought to be “always be working on a sign-up bonus”. Specifically, a starting level of this hobby is:

  1. Open a new card with a sign-up bonus
  2. Spend either organically or with manufactured techniques until you hit the spend target
  3. Start over at (1) immediately

Sign-up bonuses are typically worth a 10%-50% rebate on your spend, so don’t worry about category bonuses until you scale up. If you’re worried about 5/24 or other similar issues, focus on business cards, and especially business cards at small banks and credit unions until you graduate to a higher manufactured spend tier.

Happy Tuesday!

PS: Yes, “Always be working the sign-up bonus” isn’t nearly as sexy as “always be probing”, but that doesn’t mean it’s unsexy.

This weird 3D rendering’s message is on-point.

  1. Bilt has apparently leaked a transfer integration with JAL MileageBank, visible only after logging in, and then only sometimes. This will likely be really live around May 1 and it may have a transfer bonus then too. I don’t want to tell you how to feel about this integration, but I will say I’m quite excited personally.

    Why talk about it now if it’s not fully online yet? So you’ve got time to earn Bilt points for a possible transfer bonus in a week and a half. (thanks to nikaidoushinku)
  2. There’s a new link that enables what I’m going to call a targeted American Express sandwich. It utilizes three of my favorite five stack techniques:

    1. Business Gold with 200,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months (NLL)
    2. Business Platinum upgrade with 120,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months (this link is a hacked link, possibly risky)
    3. Employee card offers for 15,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 spend on up to five employee cards

    Spend for (3) will work for both of the bonuses in (1) and (2) which gives lets you earn three bonuses with a single swipe. There are variations on this sequence to attempt to go further with employee cards, but I’m trying to keep this post short and I guess mysterious so we’ll cut it off here.
  3. Loyalty Lobby reports that Hilton is in the process of removing late check-out as an elite benefit, and standardizing the charge for late check-out across its brands. #bonvoyed
  4. American Express has a targeted offer for the Blue Business Plus card with 75,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in three months via head-on application and referrals. If you don’t see it, try incognito, other browsers, VPNs, mobile versus desktop, or by taping hot dogs to your fingers and typing with those.

Going overboard with hot dog fingers.

  1. The American Express Business Platinum card has several new sign up bonuses that include travel credits. Depending on where you are, the color of your socks, what type of browser you’re using, whether or not you liked Walter Mondale, or which geolocation your IP address is in, you’ll see one of:

    – 150,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel
    – 200,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel
    – 250,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel

    All three require $20,000 spend in three months earn the Membership Rewards. Each bonus is also available via referrals, and if you don’t see the offer you want, try changing how you feel about Walter Mondale and a new browser; even the same referral link can give different offers.
  2. The Cardless Avianca Elite personal American Express has an increased tiered sign-up bonus of:

    – 20,000 miles after a single purchase
    – 80,000 miles after $10,000 spend in six months

    Cardless limits you to one credit card per lifetime, so pretend to be a cat for nine cards? As far as Cardless cards go, there are worse ones I guess.
  3. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless has a new sign-up bonus of 50,000 Bonvoy points and three free night awards of 50,000 points each after $6,000 spend in six months. This will likely be available via referrals next week.

    I’d prefer a 200,000 point sign-up bonus personally, but for a $95 annual fee card this isn’t a terrible offer.
  4. Bank of America has a new personal checking $300 sign-up bonus with promo code PSJ300CIS through May 31. To qualify for the bonus, you need to receive at least $2,000 in direct deposits within 90 days. Personal checking accounts at Bank of America are useful for three reasons:

    – Fast track to Platinum Honors status
    – $5,000 or more in a checking account changes application rules and eases approvals
    – Reminds you of how bad your real bank’s UI could be

    These are churnable every 12 months.
  5. The Chase British Airways Avios personal Visa card has a heightened sign-up bonus of 100,000 Avios after $7,500 spend in six months, and this offer will likely be available via referrals next week.

    I’d rather just get an Ink card with the same sign-up bonus and annual fee to have transferrable points and to avoid the account reporting to any credit agencies, but you do you.
  6. The Barclay Wyndham Earner personal Visa has a pre-qualification tool available online. (Thanks to David)
  7. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Bank of America’s prototype advanced date of birth picker.